One of the weirdest things for me during this time was the number of interviews I went through. I swear I answered at least ten questions per interview and for some sources there were two interviewers, the journalist and the photographer each with their own sheet of inquiries.
I have never been bad at interviewing, never had terrible nerves when interviewing for job positions or scholarships, but this somehow felt different. This had so much riding on it. This one outcome being publicized took months and months of effort, involved countless stake-holders and was tied to numerous people’s names. One bad review or wrongly quoted statement seemed like it could cause a lot of damage or at least hurt numerous people.
Leading the project for the market meant handling the majority of, if not all, the press for said event. Interviews took place before and during the process of pursuing the ability to host the market. Also many took place at the actual market and during the weeks of the markets first debut(s). At first they made me uncomfortable and afraid to say the wrong thing, but as a leader I knew it was my job to put out the right information about our event to the media.
All in all we ended up interviewing with three newspapers, an on campus television station and an off campus for the state of Michigan station. I got tired of giving the same information over and over again, but I knew it was important not only for getting the word out, but for documenting the success of this time in our lives and for the history of the university.
Here are the links to a couple of the on campus paper’s articles on the market:
Claire's Conclusions 